Tag Archives: independents

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On the 7th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 attacks, Ralph Nader has become the only presidential candidate (besides Green party nominee Cynthia McKinney, who has been a 9/11 Truth advocate since 2002) to demand a “real investigation” into the events of that fateful morning.

It was more than just campaign rhetoric; more than just the usual faux indigination we so often get from the candidates on days like these. Ralph Nader made it a promise, a solemn pledge to the American people.

Nobody else in this race is going to crane their necks very hard looking for the truth. They’re all too busy reading the TelePrompTer, checking their hairstyles in the mirror, and putting lipstick on pigs.

Remember that old Southern saying, “when pigs fly?” That’s exactly what you’ll hear from both John McCain and Barack Obama if you ask them for a new investigation into 9/11.

If, by some miracle, Nader actually got elected, I think I’d feel pretty good about letting him run the store. One thing I do know about Ralph Nader: he loves the Constitution and knows the law like nobody’s business. He prosecutes people who violate it, which is more than I can say for our Democrats in Congress.

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader pledged support for a new investigation into the events of 9/11 Monday, commenting that the 9/11 Commission was “flawed, right from the get go”.

Nader was questioned by members of We Are Change Ohio at a campaign rally in Cincinnati, Ohio earlier this week.

Asked if he supported the 9/11 Truth Movement and the efforts of activists and victims’ families to expose the lies surrounding the attacks, Nader responded;

“I was there when they were collecting signatures in the audience and I supported it.” Nader ommented, referring to We are Change’s activities at the meeting.

“The 9/11 Commission, first of all, it took the members of the great families to push the administration even to have an inquiry, can you imagine an attack like that and the government didn’t even want to have an inquiry?” stated Nader.

“And second, the ground rules for the 9/11 Commission were that they weren’t going to name names, or hold anybody responsible, that’s a real investigation,” he added with irony.

“So right from the get go it was flawed and there needs to be another one, and the best place to have it is New York City.” Nader concluded.

Nader was a key figure in the original movement to establish the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a government agency that has been fiercely criticized for its role in declaring the air at ground zero safe to breathe, when in reality it contained deadly toxins that have led to the chronic illnesses and slow deaths of hundreds of first responders.

Nader recently spoke with Alex Jones (Mp3) concerning the lack of difference between the two main party candidates, the violations of the Constitution by the current administration, the futility of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the reasons he is running for president for a fifth time.

HERE’S THE VIDEO FROM NADER’S SPEECH YESTERDAY:

(Apologies for poor audio/video quality)

NADER ASKS RON PAUL SUPPORTERS TO JOIN HIM

* Ralph Nader posted this message on his website after holding a news conference at the National Press Club yesterday with former presidential candidate Ron Paul:

Today, along with other third party candidates, I joined Congressman Ron Paul to endorse a common agenda that stands up for the US Constitution by ending illegal wars, and protecting the privacy and civil liberties of all persons under US jurisdiction. We also jointly called for an immediate halt to the increase in the national debt, an end to corporate subsidies and taxpayer bailouts of corporations, and to start aggressively pursuing prosecution of corporations that commit crimes and frauds.

Both Congressman Paul and I also support holding President Bush and Dick Cheney to account for their transgressions against our Constitution.

Today’s coming together of third party candidates marks the beginning of the realignment of American politics.

While Congressman Paul and I do not agree on all things — such as health and safety regulations and health insurance systems and how to handle areas where the market fails or is not up to the task of getting the best outcomes for the American people — on the overriding foreign policy, reckless waste financed by deficit spending, and civil liberties issues of the day, we stand together. He is a stalwart who has consistently stood up for what he believes in and never wavered when he is opposed by the legions of commercial interests and lobbyists that swarm the Capitol.

Congressman Paul said today, “the strongest message can be sent by rejecting the two-party system, which in reality is a one-party system with no possible chance for the changes to occur which are necessary to solve our economic and foreign policy problems.” He also called on his supporters to vote for Nader/Gonzalez or one of the other non-establishment, principled candidates, who support the joint statement issued today.

For all the millions of people who have broken free from the establishment parties’ domination over our dwindling democracy, Nader/Gonzalez presents a clear choice for those who want to support a candidate who will stand up against the war and stand up for personal liberties and privacy that have been trampled on by the notorious, misnamed, PATRIOT Act, the FISA ‘snoop’ Bill, and the unilateral dictates of the Bush/Cheney regime.

Some unfairly paint the Nader/Gonzalez candidacy as being for big government. Nothing could be more untrue.

Nader/Gonzalez supports a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We agree with Congressman Paul that government is rife with waste and corporate demands, and needs to be scaled back in many areas — most of all the bloated, wasteful US military budget, which is half of the government’s total operating budget.

We are also against big government doling out hundreds of billions in corporate welfare, subsidies, and bailouts to companies.

We support abolishing income tax on the first $50,000 of income to be made up with a fraction of a percent Wall Street speculation tax, especially on derivatives.Click here to listen to Ralph’s remarks at yesterday’s press conference.

Bobby is also working with investigative journalist Greg Palast on a separate voting integrity project called Steal Back Your Vote. RFK Jr. appears in the video with Palast below:

Both of these projects, NoVoterLeftBehind.net (a byproduct of the Democratic party), and StealBackYourVote.org (totally nonpartisan) need your support right now! Please consider making a financial contribution to help fund these very worthwhile efforts.

Forget all that crap the mainstream media tells you about John McCain being a maverick. Want to hear a REAL maverick speak? Well, you ain’t gonna hear him at the RNC Convention, folks. Better switch your tee-vee set to C-SPAN and watch the amazingly well-attended Ron Paul counter-convention coverage instead.

During his speech, in which Ventura called for a peaceful revolution to “take our country back,” he said that can only happen once the American people stop falling for the phony left-right paradigm. “I am not a Democrat!” Ventura said to thunderous cheers. “And I am not a Republican! And I say that very proudly today because I think these two parties are destroying our country.”

Ventura also talked about his success as a third party candidate and encouraged people to vote locally for independent candidates to break the Republican-Democrat stranglehold.

“So it can be done – don’t ever allow anyone to tell you that it can’t be done, it can be done!” Ventura exclaimed.

Ventura concluded his speech by saying, “We can take our country back, it can be done, but it’s not gonna happen with talk – it’s gonna happen with action. I wrote the book Don’t Start The Revolution Without Me – well I’m here….let’s get the revolution going!”

He also strongly hinted at a Presidential run in 2012, adding that if the country showed him it was possible, he would consider running, “we’ll give them a race they’ll never forget!”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is this year’s keynote speaker at the annual Forecastle Festival in Louisville, Kentucky (happening all weekend, with RFK Jr.’s speech scheduled for Sunday at 2:30 p.m.).

In advance of his appearance at Forecastle, Kennedy gave an interview to Velocity Weekly, in which he discusses green solutions to our energy crisis, the 2008 election, why he’s supporting Senator Obama for president, and hints at his own political plans for the future.

Although the interview is quite good, we did have to wonder, “what’s up with that photo?” As for the cutesy caption, we think what the cutline editor meant to say was “Don’t mess with this Kennedy” rather than “don’t miss with this Kennedy.”

Perhaps Bobby should consider sending one of his hawks over there to demand a correction.

Q&A:

Robert Kennedy Jr.Sound environmental policy is in our economic and security interest, the Forecastle keynoter says

I’ve been interested in the environment from when I was a little kid. I went hunting and fishing when I was very, very young. I was just involved with animals. I was raising homing pigeons when I was 10 years old, training hawks when I was 9, which I still do today. My father took us to lakes and to see the wildlife in the area, and he was very careful about explaining to us that this is part of our American heritage. The environment was a source of our virtues and our values as a people. I always looked at the environment as a civil rights and human rights issue — the most important one.

You co-host a program on Air America Radio, but what other environmental work do you do?

For 25 years I’ve been working for the Riverkeeper and the National Resources Defense Council. As an attorney, I’ve worked on several hundred public interest cases against polluters on the Hudson River and waterways across North America. Riverkeeper was a group started by a blue-collar coalition of commercial and recreational fishermen to protect their livelihood. And it was very much consistent with the kind of values I’d been raised with, to believe that a clean environment was a democratic right, that the best measure of how a democracy functions is how it distributes the goods of the land: the air, the water, the wildlife, the fish — assets of the community. Does the government allow those to be concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy people, or corporations, or does it maintain it in the hands of all the people?

Are you encouraged by the recent surge of interest in environmental issues?

There’s a vested interest by powerful people in continuing to pollute — it’s not a battle that you “kind of” win. It’s one you have to keep fighting. But today, there’s much more of a realization that good environmental policy is also 100 percent of the time good economic policy. For individual corporations, governments and nations, we need to start focusing on our environment.

So what is the most serious environmental issue we’re facing?

In the United States, the most critical issue is the way we use energy. We use it in a way that weakens our national security and makes us more prone to entanglement with foreign dictators who hate democracy and who are despised by their own people. We’re more likely to be involved in trillion-dollar wars. And it causes global warming. It also destroys our economy. We’re buying oil mainly from nations that don’t like us, that don’t share our values. Are we going to continue down that path or are we going to look at the alternatives? We have really extraordinary alternatives in this country. Every country that has de-carbonized its economy has experienced immediate prosperity. We’re losing jobs abroad — if we invested in a clean economy, we’d be creating an economy that can’t be outsourced. We’d be building solar and wind and geothermal plants in this country and growing our economy and creating jobs that can’t be sent to other countries.

What one action, if every American took it, could improve the environment?

One small thing: Vote for Barack Obama. That’s the one small thing that’s more important than recycling your garbage or buying a Prius or a compact fluorescent light bulb. There are these politicians who are just indentured servants of Big Coal and Big Oil.

You were an early Hillary Clinton supporter, right?

Yes. I’ve always loved Barack Obama, too. I always thought we had two great candidates. I’m proud to be supporting him and working for him now.

Have you ever considered seeking public office yourself?

You know, I’ve got six kids, and my priorities are there. But if something opened up, I would definitely consider it.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will give the Forecastle Festival keynote address at 2:30 p.m. Sunday at the Belvedere.

The author (who is a frequent commentator on this blog) sent us a copy and granted permission to post it here at the Kennedy for President website as well. We think you’ll enjoy what she has to say.

OPINION:

OBAMA IS NOT THE NEXT RFK!

To: The Editorial Staff of the Washingtonian

I thank you for allowing me and like-minded others to address this important issue. Your article on RFK was very painful to read, as I was a young, passionate campaigner in that glorious quest that was Robert Kennedy For President in 1968.

What is all this nonsense of comparing Obama to Robert Kennedy? Are all of you deaf and blind to the fact that one of the most charismatic, capable, and noble of men is alive and well?

He is right now one of the smartest stewards of Planet Earth. A man who draws crowds of strangers who walk away disciples. A man capable of leading when major societal surgery is necessary. A man who will appeal to cross generations of Americans, a man who can appeal to Blacks, Muslims, Jews and Catholics alike. A man who will once again inspire our youth with patriotism and give them effective programs, like JFK’s Peace Corps, in which to invest their talents and skills in a way that supports our country at large.

He is a man every inch his father’s son and his name is ROBERT F KENNEDY, JR!

We missed the opportunity this year, but I pray somebody in agreement with me, somebody REAL powerful and passionate about Bobby Kennedy Sr. will see the light and get RFK’s torch in his hand.

There is a group of devoted volunteers and Kennedy supporters who have started a web site and petition to encourage RFK Jr. to run for the White House. I invite readers, or whoever happens to read this in editorial office to take a peek at http://www.RFKin2008.com.

I have nothing against Obama, but he does not move me like Kennedy, Jr. does and I can not, for example, see him coaxing Americans to find and implement radical new ways of transportation to keep ourselves alive in the years to come. Our enviromental policy has been disasterous; we can no longer keep giving our money and wealth away to the Arab Emerates. We live in deadly serious times that cry for a level of charisma, common sense, and leadership that I have only seen evidenced in Bobby, Jr. As Barry Goldwater, a good friend of JFK, used to say, “In your Heart You Know He’s Right!”.

Right now the dreams of many of us who were behind Bobby Kennedy for 2008 seem dimmed. However, the times we are living in are so crazy, this campaign has gone off into the most aberrant directions in both campaigns that yes, I CAN, visualize millions of voters going to the polls and drafting our Next President. After all that is going down, what was once unthinkable is now plausable.

The presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee: now that it’s all but official, Senator Barack Obama is getting down to the business of selecting a running mate. Today he announced that Caroline Kennedy will be part of a three-member team who will help him choose a VP.

OBAMA TAPS CAROLINE KENNEDY TO LEAD VEEP SEARCH

WASHINGTON (AP) – Barack Obama turned in earnest to the general election and the hunt for a running mate Wednesday, embraced by Democratic leaders who signaled forcefully and sometimes impatiently to Hillary Rodham Clinton that her marathon duel with Obama was over. Clinton kept her silence in public, while supporters made a case for her as Obama’s No. 2.

Obama himself moved to link himself more closely with a young Democratic hero of a half-century ago, picking President Kennedy’s daughter Caroline to help him choose a vice president.

While Clinton still wasn’t conceding, even after Tuesday’s primaries and a flood of “superdelegate” endorsements of Obama sealed the nomination, there were signs aplenty that she was closing shop. She began bidding campaign staff members farewell, and a number were told not to come to work after Friday. Last paychecks were expected to go out June 15.

The primary rivals ran into each other backstage at a hall where both spoke to Jewish leaders, but Obama said there was no mention of how or when she would formally end her long campaign to become the nation’s first female president.

Obama showed no impatience, merely smiling and accepting congratulations from colleagues in both parties as he returned to the Capitol for a Senate vote. But other Democrats urged her to get out of the way.

“I don’t see why we don’t get on with it and endorse” Obama, said Rep. Charles Rangel, a congressman from Clinton’s home state of New York. He said it was only a matter of time before he and other Clinton supporters formally back Obama.

“I don’t want to push her. Nobody is going to push her,” Durbin said on MSNBC. “But the sooner she does, I think the more likely we’re going to be organized and ready to win in November.”

Obama began focusing on who will join his ticket in the fall. His campaign said the vetting of potential running mates was to be managed by a three-person team of Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and longtime Washington insider Jim Johnson.

Clinton has told lawmakers privately that she would be interested in the vice presidential nomination. Obama was noncommittal after his chat with her behind the scenes at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

“We’re going to be having a conversation in coming weeks, and I’m very confident how unified the Democratic Party’s going to be to win in November,” he told reporters after a vote in the Senate where he received congratulations from all sides.

RFK Jr. on the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton earlier this year in NJ.

(Well, if an Obama/Clinton ticket ain’t gonna happen: Pssst…Caroline! if it wouldn’t be too classic a case of Kennedy nepotism, we’d like to nominate your cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the VP selection committee’s consideration.)

CLINTON CAMPAIGN IS OVER

Update: As of late this afternoon, CNN is reporting that Senator Hillary Clinton will officially end her campaign Friday.

Meanwhile, the dam holding back endorsements broke from coast to coast on the day after the primary elections concluded.

Seven senators who had stayed out of the matter said they were giving Obama their commitment and would work toward uniting Democrats for the election, now exactly five months away.

In Nashville, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen was joined by two other superdelegates to say they hoped to bring the party behind Obama even though Clinton won their state. Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who had been a Clinton supporter, announced he was backing Obama.

It hardly mattered in terms of delegate math – after months of struggle, Obama had more than enough to prevail at the party convention in Denver in August. But Obama’s new backers were also sending a message to Clinton that her race was over.

Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, was lobbying members of the Congressional Black Caucus to urge Obama to place Clinton on the ticket. He said he was doing so with her blessing.

Rangel, a founding member of the caucus, expressed doubts that Johnson’s approach would work. “I don’t really think that the way to get Obama to (choose) Clinton would be to put pressure on him. I think it would have the opposite effect,” Rangel said.

The Obama camp’s disclosure about the three-person veep vetting team was an effort to change the subject from the long, divisive primary campaign toward the general election.

Kennedy’s name came as a surprise, although she endorsed Obama at a critical time last winter, saying he could be an inspirational leader like her father. She also campaigned for Obama.

Holder is a former federal prosecutor and District of Columbia Superior Court judge who held the No. 2 job at the Justice Department under President Clinton.

Johnson is widely known among Democrats for having helped previous candidates, including John Kerry four years ago, sift through vice presidential possibilities. He is a former chief executive officer for the mortgage lender Fannie Mae.

Clinton visited her campaign headquarters in suburban Arlington, Va., where she thanked staff members for their work. Aides said she was also phoning superdelegates and supporters, and planned to host an 89th birthday celebration at her Washington home for her mother, Dorothy Rodham.

Several high-dollar fundraisers who had spoken to the former first lady described her as upbeat and realistic about what she faced.

“She’s very resolved, but open minded about whatever’s coming. She’s going forward with an optimistic eye,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, a San Francisco-based fundraiser who flew from New York to Washington early Wednesday morning.

Some lawmakers showed deference to Clinton, an indication of the political and fundraising power that she and her husband still wield.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, an uncommitted superdelegate, said he will be supporting Obama but declined to make a formal endorsement. “I expect Mrs. Clinton to say some things over the next couple of days and I think that’s appropriate for her to do. And I expect her to say that, at which time I may make a more formal” announcement, Hoyer said.